MUSIC CENTER PLAZA

yU+co partnered with Los Angeles’ The Music Center to transform their courtyard into a dynamic “Smart Plaza” with two new large LED screens at the center of the $41 million renovation. For the Music Center, it was important that the screens connect to the public in a compelling way reflecting the activity and energy of the Plaza. yU+co installed three cameras and a 3D scanner across the Plaza in order to capture the light, motion and sounds of the Plaza. The screens respond to the environment in a way that changes as the conditions change, creating a new and singular experience for the visitor each time they step onto the Plaza.



yU+co designed the interactive capabilities for the LED screens to consist of five unique applications. The “Plaza Augmented” application uses the three cameras to feed live video of the Plaza into a machine learning program that analyzes the imagery and translates that data into an artistic style. For the Music Center Plaza’s grand opening, the live video of the event was transformed into a “Living Canvas” visualizing the Plaza in recognizable painterly styles of artists such as Hokusai. In the future, The Music Center will collaborate with local L.A. artists to conceive new works that are based on this technology and specifically created for the LED screens.